…what do we see?
A question, although minus the horses, posed by Dan Rebellato.
I hope thus far, dear reader, you have been entertained with my theatrical musings, occasional rants, and multitude of instagram posts -some of which were originally taken for academic purposes, I promise.
#MApurposes
We don’t always imagine things visually.
(Rebellato, 2009, 21)
While reading and being in discussion with Pornography (not that kind. Filth, the lot of you!) by Simon Stephens, Dan Rebellato got thrown into the mix, and made us call into question imagination. Now, we all have one, and we all use it, but how does it work? What we can imagine is limited to what we know and how far we can stretch and craft that knowledge, it can be fooled and is imprecise.
You can imagine such a world without doing so visually.
(Rebellato, 2009, 22)
As strange and impossible this sounds, we do it all the time when asked to imagine, even if indirectly. When reading a book, or a play, we create these worlds in our heads without seeing each minute detail. We skim over what the grass feels like, or where the freckles lie on the secondary characters face.
And as I found out, we can imagine that which we have never seen.
Following Pornography, I read The Author by Tim Crouch.
*If you, dear reader, are of a sensitive nature, I’d recommend leaving us here, and re-joining us at the next blog post, or over at Performance Musings*.